I think you're getting way too hung up on the fact that the proposedauto.conf will be stored as a flat file. From your comments upthread,I gather that you'd be rejoicing if it were a table.

I'd be happy if it was a table which managed an *independent* set ofparameters from those used to bootstrap the system, but no one seems tolike breaking up the options between "things that can be sanely modifiedwithout other OS changes" and "things which require OS support".

I agree with Robert's comments upthread that if the new facility can't doeverything that can be done today by editing postgresql.conf, it's notgoing to be adequate. So I'm not in favor of having two sets ofparameters. It's also not clear to me that we can make a reliabledistinction between parameters that can prevent a server restart vs thosethat can't; or at least, the set of the latter will be much smaller thanone could wish.